It probably does not make sense to talk about the potential of social media as a business tool – they have long been inseparable from each other. That is why we decided to give you some tips on how you can use social media for marketing, attracting, selling, keeping in touch with your target audience, and much more, plus we backed it up with real campaign examples from leading brands from various industries.
Promote Your Values – Airbnb
The cost of the product, the quality of service is certainly important for modern consumers – as are your values. And sometimes values have even greater priority in decision making than other factors. Social media is a great place to translate your values and mission – and what’s more, here you can share them with your target audience.
To this end, Airbnb has launched the #WeAccept social and marketing campaign. Its essence is to make users understand that the company does not recognize cultural, racial, religious, physical and political differences. In other words, everyone who rents housing with Airbnb also supports the idea of cosmopolitanism, according to which everyone is primarily a person, and any differences are nothing more than conventions.
In addition to attracting a large number of users from all over the world, the campaign also triggered a wave of discussions on equality, freedom, and discrimination around the world.
Get User-Generated Content – Apple
Yes, you know this initiative – its essence is to take a photo using an iPhone and share it using a brand hashtag. The goal of this idea is to get as much user-generated content as possible. And what’s more, it’s not necessary to sell applephones to realize this idea – something similar will work with other types of business.
- If you sell clothes, it might be a winning idea to ask users to share their photos of outlooks bought from you.
- If you are the owner of a cafe or restaurant, then photos of users in your institution may be useful to you as well.
In addition, this idea can also be interestingly combined with competitions or marathons – for example, to offer small bonuses for pieces of user content, or to encourage users to share their results, for example, in the Before-and-After format.
The user-generated content idea also works great for getting backlinks. For example, you can ask users to share something on their personal blogs and insert a link to your project. Or get the right amount of backlinks using the Linksmanagement link generation service.
Take Care of the Audience – Worldwide Breast Cancer
This is an educational campaign in social networks, the main purpose of which is to raise awareness among users about the problem of breast cancer and the possibilities of a timely diagnosis. Using a simple analogy – lemons, the organization speaks softly about the possible symptoms that should be discussed with the doctor.
Therefore, if you know that your target audience also needs additional knowledge or precautions, a creative and very loyal social media campaign is what you need.
Target the Right Users – British Army
This is unexpected, right? However, the British army came up with a very interesting strategy in social media – and decided to attract representatives of millennials to their ranks. How did they do it? With attractive graphics materials and a common language with their target audience. Take a look at an example.
The current generation really loves to take selfies, however, the initiators of the campaign speak of this feature not as selfishness and narcissism, but as self-confidence – that is, they cause the right positive emotion and send the right marketing message to the right audience.
And this idea can also be promoted in different directions – for example, to attract new employees or to get acquainted with a foreign target audience.
Sell More Products – See Jane Work
In this case, the brand made a strong emphasis on the visual attractiveness of the profile on Instagram, and also added the possibility of instant purchases. And here, in fact, there is nothing complicated – the whole idea was to upload photos of their products, observe the same style in all publications, mark the main product in the photo and immediately give users the opportunity to purchase it on the site.
This approach works ideally for retail and for the sale of small-sized goods, the images of which easily and naturally fit into any environment. Try this approach if you have an online store with a variety of products – and do not forget to integrate it with Instagram.
Save the Planet – Patagonia
On the occasion of Black Friday, Patagonia launched a charity initiative on social networks and announced that on this day all sales revenue will be directed to environmental initiatives. This is a comprehensive campaign – it is both about charity, ecology, and values. However, if you know that your target audience also shares a concern for the preservation of the environment, this idea is your opportunity to show yourself from an even better side.
Yes, it is necessary to invest in this case, however, user loyalty costs more than a certain part of your income, in any case. Moreover, this approach is also capable of blowing up sales – and motivating potential customers who still have doubts about active and targeted actions.
Show the Backstage of Your Company – L’oreal
Remember we talked about values? So, in addition to the fact that users want to understand your values, they also want to know who they work with. In other words, they want to be acquainted with you personally – and social networks are an ideal place to get to know each other, especially since they were originally created for this purpose as well.
Therefore, if you want to show customers and partners the real life inside the walls of your company, a campaign on social networks makes sense. Cosmetic brand L’oreal did this and started sharing photos from the inside out, and soon this idea was also taken over by other leading brands.
If you haven’t done this yet, social media is a great place to start. And be sure to use the Stories in Instagram feature – this will be the perfect combination.
Get Feedback From Customers – Lay’s
It was the most successful social media campaign conducted by this producer. The main idea was to build relationships with the target audience (the young generation from 18 to 24 years old who are the most active users of social networks), plus to get new insights about the preferences of clients. The name of the campaign Do Us a Flavor spoke for itself – the company asked users to share their ideas about the taste of chips that they would like to try.
This is an ideal example of the ability to kill two birds with one stone, and the idea is quite simple – ask a question to get an answer. And it works for almost all types of B2C businesses.
Conclusion
These were fact-finding and the most famous examples of successful marketing campaigns on social networks. However, each of the ideas is actually very easily adapted depending on the purpose, specifics of the business and the target audience. All you need is to correctly determine your priorities and come up with ideas for marketing campaigns based on them.
Marie Barnes is a Marketing Communication Manager at TheAdsy and a writer for Bestforacar. Marie is an enthusiastic blogger interested in writing about technology, social media, work, travel, lifestyle, and current affairs. She shares her insights through blogging.
